


The Damsel and The Con

by abraxos_sniffing_flowers



Series: TLC Zombie Apocalypse [1]
Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: F/M, Not much really, cresswell in deserted las vegas, what could happen, yeah one of those shitty things, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11366037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abraxos_sniffing_flowers/pseuds/abraxos_sniffing_flowers
Summary: “Hello…Hello…Is anyone there?” The girls voice came through the walkie talkie at the worst possible time. Seriously. Did she not consider that, hey, maybe the person on the receiving end might be trying to escape a train tunnel full of zombies. Silently. Thorne had to say that whatever girl was on the other end was bat shit crazy if she didn’t at least consider it.





	The Damsel and The Con

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the amazing TLC zombie apocalypse fanart created by @minidoodles97 on tumblr.

_“Hello…Hello…Is anyone there?”_ The girls voice came through the walkie talkie at the worst possible time. _Seriously._ Did she not consider that, hey, maybe the person on the receiving end might be trying to escape a train tunnel full of zombies. _Silently._ Thorne had to say that whatever girl was on the other end was bat shit crazy if she didn’t at least consider it.

 

The zombies turned to him and he ran, springing himself over the train he had been scaling. He figured his cover was blown so he let his revolvers take out any other zombies in his way. He got to the opening and pulled at the stick holding the boulder blocking the entrance and managed to only have two zombies make it out, which he quickly dispatched. He began to scale the cliff face, trying to obtain higher ground and make sure he wasn’t going to be taken by surprise.

 

He managed to unhook the walkie talkie he had found a weeks ago from his belt.

 

“Hello, if the sweetheart that was here a minute ago is still there, I would like to inform her she nearly got me killed, so thank you” Thorne waited a moment before it crackled again.

 

“Aces! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” Thorne raised an eyebrow. The girl sounded scared and yet she was asking if _he_ was okay.

 

“I wouldn’t be talking to you if I wasn’t. Who are you, sweetheart? What’s your name?” Thorne knew the fear the zombie apocalypse brings, and also the want to be near someone.

 

“Cress. Cress Darnel. I-I…um. Someone took my dad and hid me somewhere. This is the first contact that I’ve had with anyone since this… apocalypse began” Thorne sighed. This girl was evidently very scared.

 

“Okay Cress… Aces hold on” he mutters, lining his revolver up and firing. He heard a faint whimper come from the walkie talkie over the gunshot. He turned back to speak to her. “Okay Cress, do you know _where_ you are?”

 

“Um…it’s dark” Thorne shook his head, “I think it’s some kind of janitor’s closet… I’m trying to see through the peephole and I think I might be in a school”

 

“Who put you in there?”

 

“I don’t know” _of course she didn’t._

 

“Alright then, hostage-“

 

“I prefer damsel”

 

“What?”

 

“I hate the term hostage. I prefer damsel” Thorne rolled his eyes. Seriously. Of all the things he’s done in his life, he never expected to have to rescue a _damsel_. 

 

“Alright then, Damsel. Hang in there a little longer and I might be able to find you and get you out”

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Captain Carswell Thorne. But, you can call me Captain”

 

“Okay Captain. Bye Bye” and the line went dead. “bye” he muttered to himself, placing the walkie back in his pocket and beginning to scale back down the cliff. Why he was bothering with this girl was a mystery even to himself. But she sounded scared, but not in the way Thorne felt fear rushing through his veins. This girl was scared of more than just her surroundings, but the people in them. He _wanted_ to help.

 

——————————————————————————

 

“Oi, damsel, you still hangin’ in there?” Thorne sent through an hour later. He had found the closest abandoned school from where he was and had begun looking through all the closets he could find. Luckily Cress’ voice was clearer, so he figured he was close.

 

“Y-yeah, I’m here” The girl stuttered back as he reaches the second last door in the corridor. He began to pick the lock with his knife and as it clicked open, he sighed. _No-one._ He moved to the next door, the last door.

 

Knife in, jiggle, _pop._ The door swings open to a very humanoid squeak. He flicked his torch on and pans the room, finally coming to rest on something blonde on the floor. _Hair._ He follows it and comes face to face with a pair of obscurely ocean blue eyes.

 

“Geez, darl, is that _all_ hair?” He lets out. She scampers further into herself, squeaking.

 

“Sorry, that was rude. Are you Cress?” She nods, moving forward. A couple years younger lookingthan Thorne, but small. Long, straw blonde hair that she had begun to wring around her wrist, freckles smattering her cheeks and nose and blue eyes that tracked his every movement. He noticed that she wore a faded and dirty pale blue hoodie with a white shirt poking out over black tights. Her legs were tucked underneath her and he took note of the walkie on the shelf above her and flashed his to show her who he was.

 

“I’m Thorne” She seemed to almost sag in relief at his words. “Do you want out of here?” She nods again, smiling slightly.

 

She reached across and grabbed a blue backpack from behind him and began to pack all the food that lined the shelves behind and around her, as he began to do the same.

 

“Alright, Cress, what’s the best way to get out of here?”

 

“This way” Her voice was about as sweet as her looks, soft and shy. She stepped past him, took note of her surroundings and began trekking up the stairs.

 

“Why up?”

 

“Every day, I hear those things banging on the front doors, I don’t even know how you got here. I’ve been locked up for weeks, but I’m not stupid” She knocks on a door and a zombie hits the other side, making her spring back into him.

 

“Not stupid, but unaware of what I’m facing, apparently” She mutters, watching the zombie closely.

 

“Do you want to take this one down?” Thorne asks her softly. Cress makes a face before schooling her features and nodding. He gives her his knife and stands on the other side of the door out of sight before placing a hand on the doorknob.

 

“If you need rescuing, I won’t run away. Aim for the brain” She nods again, staring at the zombie. Thorne twists the handle gently and pulls the door open, letting the zombie lunge at Cress. She twirls away, but not before the zombie can step on her hair. She yelps in pain but grits her teeth and twists, grabbing the zombies wrist and plunging Thorne’s knife into it’s skull. It slumps to the ground, bleeding out all over the ends of Cress’ hair. She tries to pull away, just to be dragged back in pain.

 

“Hold on a second” Thorne says softly, grabbing the knife from her hand and wiping it on his jeans. He grabbed her hair gently, bunching it together at the back of her neck. He began to loosely move the knife through her hair, cutting the strands short so she could move more freely.

 

“Thanks” she says softly as he runs his fingers through the ends to brush out any stray tangles.

 

“There. Better?” Cress nods before stepping into the now empty room. “I went through the vents one day, but you wouldn’t fit. I found this room. We shimmy down the drainpipe.” She says, walking to the window and pulling something that looks like a bobby pin out of her pocket. She jiggles the lock and it makes a satisfying click. “The aim is to be quiet when you go down.” She mutters, climbing onto the windowsill. Thorne comes to stand beside her as she reaches for the drainpipe, wrapping her small hands around it.

 

Taking a breath, she shifted so her foot could find the bricks and swung off the window, gripping tightly to the pipe.

 

“Follow once I’m on the ground”

 

“And if the pipe breaks?”

 

“You look sturdy enough to climb down the bricks. If you break it, tuck your arms over your head and roll when you hit the ground. And, um, try not to yell.” And with that, she shifted and began to carefully lower herself down the drainpipe. She got to the bottom and made a summoning motion with her hand. He shimmied down the pipe and came to rest on the ground next to her, keeping his gun at eye level, ready to shoot, just in case.

 

“Now we run?” she asks. He nods.

 

“Now we run” Grabbing her hand, he drags her away from the side of the school and back toward the desert.

 

——————————————————————————

 

“Where are we going Captain?” Cress asks an hour later.

 

“Somewhere where we might be safe” he assures her as they managed to climb to the top of a dune overlooking the city below. “Las Vegas” Thorne murmurs, checking out the almost clear streets.

 

“Wouldn’t Vegas be full of them, though?”

 

“Nah, they cleared everyone out when the disease broke out in New Mexico. Quarantined everyone in Kansas…” he paused, almost thoughtfully. “Well, almost everyone,” smirking, he threw his backpack down the side of the dune and slid after it. 

 

Cress went to slide after him when she felt a hand around her ankle.

 

Looking down, she tried to pull her leg out of the hand that had shot out of the sand before pausing and grabbing the hand, pulling at it until a zombie’s head came out. Thorne saw and tried to dart back up the hill but she held up a hand to stop him and she quickly stabbed it and dropped the hand, wiping the blood off on her tights and sliding down the dune to join Thorne.

 

“Stars, Cress, if I had know that that was there, I wouldn’t have slid down first,” he apologised, laying a hand on her shoulder.

 

“I’m alright, just a little thrown off. Where are we going?”

 

“Paris Hotel, Las Vegas Boulevard.” Thorne says, entering the street in question and walking towards the replica Eiffel Tower. “It’ll be a good place to rest. After all, the Paris is 33 stories tall, has no electricity and zombies can’t climb stairs.”

 

 

*~*2 months*~*

 

“Ready, Set, Go!” Thorne calls and they start running toward the end of the hall on the 33rd floor. Cress starts sliding on the socks they found in someone’s leftover suitcase and giggles as she gets to the end of the hall first.

 

“I win sock-ageddon for the seventh time in a row.” She says, doing a little victory dance as Thorne pulls up beside her, faking a sad face.

 

“Only ‘cause you’re smaller and have mastered sliding on these floors”

 

“Still won” she smiles proudly and sticks her tongue out at him before turning away to take her socks off.

 

_You should kiss her_ a tiny voice in Thorne’s head yelled, annoying him. The voice had been saying the same thing for a while, ever since he realised he liked Cress more than a friend. It’s not like he wasn’t going to kiss Cress because she wasn’t cute, or a badass, or smart because she was all those things and more, it was just… that it was _Cress._ He wasn’t kissing her because she deserved better, deserved to live through this to find someone who deserved her more (not that it was hard). 

 

Besides, Cress was as nervous as they come around Thorne. He really only saw let loose when they did stupid things, like slide down a hallway in old socks. Other than that, she was quiet and constantly blushing, hands always fiddling over her walkie talkie or any other device she could get her hands on that worked.

 

“You okay Thorne?” he glanced at Cress looking up at him expectantly.

 

“Yeah, of course darling, just thinking of what hotel we can steal food from next.” Cress nods, satisfied with his answer, and stands.

 

“We can try the Luxor tomorrow, but for now…” she trails over, yawning cutely “I’m going to sleep. ‘Night captain.”

 

“Goodnight Cress,” he murmurs as she walks towards the room she had claimed as her own for the last couple of months. He frowns when she pauses with her hand on the door handle. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he could tell that the analytical cogs were turning in her mind.

 

“You alright, Cress?” He asks softly, walking to stand behind her. Cress turned to look at him, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth, drawing his attention to her mouth. He quickly shook himself out of that mindset to look over her face. She was staring at him, as if questioning him.

 

“Are yo-“ Suddenly, Cress darts forward, grabs his face and kisses him, shocking him into stillness.

 

_Cress was kissing him._

 

**_Cress_ ** _was kissing him._

 

_Cress was kissing_ **_him._ **

 

Suddenly his mind caught up with her and his body followed, pulling her closer with one arm and letting the other wind through her hair, carding his fingers through the blonde strands. Her hands moved and wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer. In that moment, all Thorne wanted was to be closer to her. Unfortunately, Cress was almost a head shorter than him. Fortunately, she was light enough that he could lift her and push her against the door. Cress wound her legs around his waist so she stayed up and kissed him harder.

 

When he finally realised that oxygen was essential for life, Thorne pulled away far enough to rest his forehead against Cress’.

 

“Wow.” Thorne whispers.

 

“Yeah.” Cress whispers back.

 

“You beat me to it.” She looks shocked at his words, her brows furrowing slightly. “Kinda been contemplating it for a little while.” Cress smiles, a blush flooding her cheeks. She opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by another yawn. Thorne softly let her down on the floor.

 

“Goodnight Cress.” He said said softly, placing a solitary kiss atop her forehead.

 

“Goodnight Thorne.” She kisses his cheek and then enters her room, leaving him smiling in the hallway. 


End file.
